Lacuna, a 10 minute video piece. A short segment is shown online.
Movement and gesture help us to connect and communicate with people around us, but the same gestures also divide people. Our body language can act as a barrier in between people and create misunderstandings and tension. Our movements often become the unexplainable difference between people from different worlds: divided by country or class.
The video displays a performance by me attempting to do the "Indian Head Nod", which is used heavily in South Asia. I cannot do the movement properly and the piece is about the struggle of trying to fit in, to adapt to someone else’s behaviour and the frustration of learning how. My attempt lasts for ten minutes, where the viewer can witness an increasing frustration in my movements, since I repeatedly fail to do it right. The piece is silent but with subtitles exposing personal fragments from my own experience: meetings with my Tamil family, personal stories on the relationship I had as a child to my father’s background and to my own otherness growing up in Swedish society.